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Ha’aretz: The Israeli ambassador in Stockholm, Isaac Bachman, speaking to Swedish government radio Tuesday, compared Israel’s release of 26 Palestinian prisoners to releasing right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, who was responsible for the massacres on the Norwegian island of Utøya in 2011…. The ambassador’s remarks have caused a storm in Sweden, and have garnered harsh criticism […]

The numbers are here, via The Fed Soc twitter feed.

Yesterday, Jim Harper of the Cato Institute and I filed an amicus brief in support of  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)’s challenge to the constitutionality of the NSA’s blanket seizures of private phone records.  Here is the summary from the Cato website: The National Security Agency’s collection of every American’s telephone dialing information is […]

Israeli pianist Astrith Baltsan explains the music of George Gershwin before a performance of Rhapsody in Blue with the Israel Philharmonic in a 2001 live broadcast on Israel TV. Which brought to mind one of the all-time-great opening sequences of a major motion picture. The only one I can think of that comes close to […]

From the author footnote of a new law review article by my colleague Dick Pierce, published in the July issue of the GW Law Review: I owe special thanks to Barbara Bruce, The George Washington University Law School Class of 2014, for providing me the best edit I have received in forty years of publishing […]

In my First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic (which will be graded pass-fail), students will work closely with each other on the briefs. Each student will likely work on three briefs during the semester, and I’ll have three students working on each brief, so each student will likely end up working with a total of six […]

Karen Sloan has the story here.

The New York Times reports: In a major shift in criminal justice policy, the Obama administration will move on Monday to ease overcrowding in federal prisons by ordering prosecutors to omit listing quantities of illegal substances in indictments for low-level drug cases, sidestepping federal laws that impose strict mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related offenses. Attorney […]

but there’s apparently plenty of money to send First Dog Bo on a private flight to join the President on Martha’s Vineyard. UPDATE: Okay, I read too much into the story. It doesn’t say that Bo arrived by himself, just that he arrived “separately” on an Osprey that has never before been used for a […]

…must have been the English judge Mr Justice Maule, who used a bigamy case to comment on the embarrassing state of marriage and divorce law in 1845: Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted before me of what the law regards as a very grave and serious offence: that of going through the marriage […]

Over at Walsh’s Law, Kevin Walsh responds to Dahlia Lithwick’s recent column on the Virginia cert petition seeking to review the Fourth Circuit’s decision in MacDonald v. Moose. The issue in Moose is the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas. The sodomy statutes at issue in Lawrence punish more conduct than […]

Shon Hopwood may be the most famous law student currently enrolled at the University of Washington. Hopwood spent time in federal prison for bank robbery, reformed, found a passion for the law, wrote a book about it, and will be clerking on the D.C. Circuit for Judge Janice Rogers Brown — an incredible redemption story. […]

As some of you have guessed, my family had to cut our stay in Lima, Peru short. Everything’s fine, but we had some medical issues that were better treated in the U.S. So, I’m back in Virginia. It was too late to undo my academic leave for 2013-14, however, so I’ll be on leave from […]

Charlie Savage has a significant article in the NY Times about the scope of NSA surveillance involving people inside the United States and outside the United States. In 50 U.S.C. 1881a(a), Congress approved surveillance via “the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.” That authorization […]

So holds SEC v. Shavers (E.D. Tex. Aug. 6, 2013), a case involving the failed “Bitcoin Savings & Trust”: First, the Court must determine whether the BTCST investments constitute an investment of money. It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money. It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers […]